Annuals or perennials. Leaf-blades flat or rolled, sometimes aromatic; ligule membranous. Inflorescence of single or subdigitate racemes, these with or without homogamous spikelet pairs at the base; intemodes and pedicels linear, solid. Sessile spikelet dorsally compressed; callus very short, rounded; lower glume broadly convex to slightly concave on the back, abruptly rounded on the flanks, with or without a circular pit; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma stipitiform, entire or rarely minutely bidentate, with a glabrous or puberulous awn. Caryopsis oblong, dorsally compressed. Pedicelled spikelet much like the sessile.

A genus of about 20 species in the Old World tropics; 3 species occur in Pakistan, one of them in cultivation only.